Cante jondo
by Fiona Sampson
Empieza el llanto de la guitarra.
Frederico García Lorca, Poem of the Gipsy Siguiriya
Doves smoke a gully:
in the desert presence bares itself
its pressure on the sky envious and delicate and
what must be said moving towards us
voluptuary of dust its tail
though we can’t make
can’t make it out among humped
hills ravines others unnamed unshaped
which the eye can’t
following the line the pointing finger moves.
Imagine it.
Imagine two people in a desert. Walking.
With a lift of her hair his hand
all of it flows towards them
bones thighs whatever the hills
then like a gully turning
everything flows back:
the horizon’s dark extra-sense
grey lines of stream beds
the alignment of what is unmanageable.
Imagine them. Two people having just
come to a halt here
their breath landing in the blue air little puffs hooff! hooff!
as if they’re making clouds
underfoot the gritty run of shale:
so high so far day splits round them.
Meanwhile in darkness the heart that plump
irritable plum.